After hours

Chapter Twenty-Three

Carrying Daniel's baby was both an exciting and horrifying event. We agreed from the very start not to tell anyone. That much was obvious. But decided it would be best for me even to not tell anyone I was pregnant at all in the beginning, not while the risk of miscarriage was at its greatest.

I couldn't help but feel very alone most of the time. Since I'd gotten pregnant Daniel had been pretty firm about me no longer traveling. He took a lot of my work away from me and gave it out to other employees. No matter how much I insisted I was fine, it's not like I was lifting heavy things or doing anything physical at all for that matter. To be honest, I wasn't even particularly stressed about work. I mostly just did visuals, brain storms, and presentations these days anyway. The guys all came up with the actual figures and propositions.

With less projects together I was seeing a lot less of Daniel though. That was stressing me out.

On one hand, I felt like he was trying to help to keep me with as little stress as possible, and on the other I thought he might be trying to just keep his distance. Not seeing Daniel as much was putting me on edge. Our sex life was struggling, he was terrified of hurting the baby no matter how many articles I showed him staying that he couldn't.

He was quick to hold my hair back should I puke, or to offer a foot rub before I should even have to ask, he harassed me about eating more. But there seemed to be an invisible wall between us.

"Are you sure you're okay?" Daniel asked sitting on my bed, fully dressed as he always seemed to be these days, as I was getting ready.

"Fine." I muttered and he grimaced. "Why wouldn't I be?"

I was just past eleven weeks and my sister was having an engagement party. I was happy for her.

Except, I maybe wasn't quite as happy as I should be.

Her and Nathan had been together about six months now. Meaning they hadn't even been together half as long as Daniel and I had been. She hadn't even called me to tell me she was engaged. She'd sent me a damn invitation to the engagement party with an rsvp card that listed the 'plus one' option on it.

This was the sort of thing Daniel should be coming with me to. Hell, this should be our party.

"You know I love you right?" He asked softly.

I sighed heavily. He said that all the time. And I do mean, all the time. When I would tell him about the cute name I heard on television that day and he would blanch and be mute for a full twenty minutes, when he'd finally speak again he would say "you know I love you right?"

When I suggested spending a weekend together to clean out my fuck-it-all-room to start setting up a nursery before I started getting bigger and less mobile he simply waved the idea off. He'd stated he didn't see any way that he could get another whole weekend away from Tori. But "you know I love you, right?"

When I had told him I was thinking about how much it would mean to my mom to have the baby baptized and asked if he would have an issue with that he sighed heavily. "I don't know Ryan. I just don't know about all of that, but you know I love you. Don't you?"

"You do a heck of a job showing it these days." I muttered with a little more force than I had intended.

"What?"

"Nothing. You just. You say that all the time."

"Do you want me to stop saying that I love you?" He looked me up and down. I was wearing a short red dress. "Don't you think you should wear something a little...looser?"